Soul Catcher

"We think too small at times, like a frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view" Lao-Tzu

I was recently in a brainstorming session with a colleague, really thinking deep & creative about a business challenge and trying hard to generate a solution and idea to overcome that challenge. In our discussion, we filled up our white board a couple times writing over each other with different marker colors challenging our thoughts as they flowed somewhat freely and in a safe harbor of trust.

After several dozen minutes pass, I started to ask myself if we were taking the wrong approach and as this thought entered my mind; I asked “Are we looking at this the right way?”

I recalled in my mind a novel I had read in my youth called Soul Catcher by Frank Herbert 

In the book I remember the Native American talking about the hunting of animals as he escorted the captured boy. He explained that the human eye can see the movement of game animals much better if one looks slightly off-center vs. directly down the path. This allows the peripheral vision to spot this movement more efficiently than that of the direct gaze of the eye. This caused me to think if there is a minds-eye version of this that can be used in an “enterprise-corporate” sense to allow for an indirect solution to be generated for the problem at-hand. 

I explained to my colleague that maybe we are not seeing the answer because we are looking to directly for a solution i.e. let’s focus in on some of the peripheral challenges we know how to solve and see if that by solving for those, the larger more elusive answer would emerge and we could spot it. 

The evening did not yield the full answer to the challenge, but we did make progress before we realized it was past time to head home. We learned quickly that focusing on the details in many ways does lead to the bigger opportunities presenting themselves particularly when referencing joint-experience, simply did not probe a worthy answer i.e. a very difficult problem indeed! 

The lesson of ensuring you have enterprise peripheral vision as brainstorming and troubleshooting method for me, warranted further exploration and awareness.

Going forward with challenges that don’t readily present solutions, ensuring I am using my mind’s eye peripheral vision will be a new tactic I employ.

Let's see if Soul Catcher in 1987 indeed held lessons, long dormant now surfacing these many years later.

Stephen Gillett